1. Technical Field
The invention disclosed broadly relates to data processing and more particularly relates to the display of multimedia presentations from an on-line book.
2. Background Art
Large, softcopy documents have been stored in data processing systems for later retrieval and display. The retrieval of documents using a computer has been a prominent application in both business and library science. However, the presentation of large, softcopy documents for display on a monitor screen, has been in a serial, page-by-page format. The page-by-page presentation has made the on-line review of large, softcopy documents a slow and inefficient operation. To solve this problem of page-by-page presentation, softcopy book reading programs have been devised. For example, the IBM BookManager (.TM.) READ program helps the user manage, search and look at on-line books. There are two complementary BookManager products, BookManager BUILD creates on-line books from files marked-up with Generalized Markup Language. The BookManager READ product can then manage, search and show the on-line books created by BookManager BUILD. The BookManager READ program product is described in the IBM publication "BookManager (.TM.) READ, Displaying On-Line Books," publication number SC23-0449-0, February 1989. The BookManager BUILD program product is described in the IBM publication "BookManager (.TM.) BUILD--Preparing On-Line Books," publication number SC23-0450-0 , February 1989. These books are available from IBM branch offices.
Conventional softcopy book reading programs typically display the pages of the softcopy book on a conventional monitor display screen. Multimedia presentation formats such as audio presentation., video presentation, sequential image animation presentation, and the like have not been considered a part of the presentation format which can be included and displayed in softcopy on-line books. Among the problems confronting the prior art which have prohibited the provision of multimedia presentation from on-line books is the lack of standardization in multimedia output devices and software drivers. This is due in part to the rapid rate of development of new multimedia output devices and it is further due in part to a lack of organized standards in the industry.